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He'd found the makeup at the back of one of his dad's drawers. His mom's, obviously, from when she'd still been here. It's where he'd got the idea, originally, although he didn't do anything about it then. He just held the pink powdery palette up to his face and tilted his head, thinking. Then he tucked it in his pocket to secrete it away in his room later, before returning to the kitchen where his dad's sorting breakfast.
🖍
Buck is nice. Buck is cool. His birthmark is, too. And Chris is just a kid, so of course he gets the intense urge to touch it. He never does, though, but sometimes he almost asks. He doesn't think Buck would mind—wouldn't mind it from Chris especially.
He's always been tactile, with both his dad and Chris himself, ruffling Chris' hair or knocking shoulders with Dad as they walk next to each other. It tracks—they're partners on the job, after all. There's a certain level of closeness you achieve with someone you work in such proximity with. The touch doesn't end when they walk out the firehouse doors. It lingers in their cars and in the spaces between every word, settles like dust into their respective homes, follows them about everywhere with a step that Chris tries to keep a watchful eye on, but can't always succeed in.
It's beginning to get a little hard to discern where Dad ends and Buck starts.
🖍
He next thinks about it in art class when they're told to draw what family looks like to them, and the answer comes easy to Chris. He makes sure to get his hands on a pink crayon, and he goes back to his desk with a picture fully formed in his mind. Chris, centred, the smallest figure but larger than life with the way the adults in his life care for him. Dad, to his right, a soft smile on his face as he looks at Chris like he's the most precious thing to have ever existed. Mom, on his left, a would-be hand on his shoulder, if Chris could draw it accurately, if she was still here to support him. He ignores the lump that rises in his throat at the thought of never feeling her touch again.
He waits until his teacher has finished looking over his shoulder before he dares add Buck in. He knows it's not wrong, that family takes many shapes and forms, but—he doesn't want her to see him adding Buck into the equation. Buck is for certain eyes only. What he means to him and his dad can't be explained in just a few short words. He could say that's Buck, and his teacher might nod in pretend understanding, but she'd never properly get it. Buck is precious. Buck is the best. He takes Chris to the zoo, and he doesn't treat Chris any different than his dad does, which is to say he doesn't treat Chris like he's easily broken. If anything, he makes it possible for Chris to push past any parameters others might only see as a barrier.
He takes extra care when shading in Buck's birthmark, and his hand hovers in the shape of a question when it drifts to his own image, curving around the space over and under his eyebrow. It's a hesitation that doesn't last long, and he copies the shape as best he can. He sets the crayon down and looks down at his work with a careful smile.
Yeah. That's what family is to Chris.
🖍
When he gets home, he proudly shows off his portrait to Dad.
"What's this, bud?" he asks, rubbing his thumb across the spot over Chris' eye where he's drawn two pink dots, as close as an approximation as he can get to the shape and shade of where it lies on Buck in real life.
"It's Buck's birthmark, Dad," Chris says, like it's obvious, because, well—it is. Dad's surely more familiar with it than Chris is, anyway, considering they work together for hours at a time, and sometimes still Buck will accompany Dad home.
He'll cook in the kitchen and he'll sleep on the couch and it makes sense, at the same time that it doesn't make much sense. He does the tasks of someone who's lived here a while, finding the pots and the pans with ease and flinging them about the kitchen like they mean nothing whilst simultaneously everything. He handles them like he's honoured to touch something Dad pulled off the shelves of a store, and his dad surely hadn't put much thought into it when he picked them, but Buck holds them like he did.
He flips pancakes over the stove and doesn't much flinch when some of the batter flies up and hits the ceiling. He presses a finger to his mouth as if to say don't tell when he drags a kitchen chair over and steps up onto it to wipe the debris away with a cloth. He cards a hand through Chris' hair as he puts the chair back like nothing happened, as Chris giggles and whispers Promise, Buck. He shares a conspiratorial look with Chris when Dad walks back into the room, peering between the two of them like he knows they've been up to something, but can't quite figure out what.
He fits into the house and makes it into a home, and he's etched into every wall. Some of the lines by the door frame where they've measured Chris' height are drawn by Buck, date and feet and inches written in Buck's scrawl. He's everywhere and he's nowhere and Chris misses him like a phantom limb when he's not there. He knows his dad does, too.
So, yeah. Dad should really know what those two pink smudges are.
"Huh," Dad says, looking down at the drawing with a furrowed brow. He runs his thumb over the birthmark Chris has drawn on himself again, before almost absentmindedly ghosting over to where he's drawn Buck too, mirroring the movement across Buck's eye. "Cute," he murmurs.
Chris almost doesn't hear it, but— He cocks his head and peers up at his dad through his glasses.
"Me or Buck?" he says, trying to be sly, maybe to not much success, if the way Dad reaches out to scruff Chris' hair is any indication. Chris can't help but lean into the gesture.
"You, of course, mijo," he says, through laughter.
"So you don't think Buck is cute?" Chris tries. Maybe he's fishing a little. Maybe it's worth it for the look on Dad's face.
Dad's throat clicks with a swallow. "Buck is—" A brief pause. "He's—you know—he's Buck," he finishes, a little lamely.
It's answer enough for Chris.
"I want to look like Buck, Dad," he tells him emphatically. "His birthmark is cool."
He doesn't say that sometimes he looks in the mirror and thinks he already does. The curl of their hair—although Buck doesn't wear it that way much—and the colour of it too. Their eyes are different, brown versus blue, but Chris sees the crinkles when they smile the same. He recognises the different traits he's been given by his mom and his dad, but if he sees himself briefly in a reflection, he can't help but see Buck. Buck, with parts of his mom and dad shining through. He bleeds their love, but it outwardly presents like his dad's best friend, and that's—maybe that's something. Or maybe it's not, and Chris is taking the way he sees his dad looking at Buck and turning it into wishful thinking.
He knows there’s love there. He also knows his dad will most likely never do anything about it.
🖍
He goes and fetches the makeup from where he's hidden it in his desk.
There's no label on it, and Chris certainly wouldn't call himself an expert on makeup, but—when it had been just him and his mom, Dad overseas with bravery painted on his face that he says the St. Christopher medal had given him, he'd used to sit on her lap as she got ready in the morning, and he'd pass her the lipstick when she asked and watch as she turned her lips a brighter shade of pink, or fiddle with the mascara wand once she got done running it through her lashes. He's seen her handle things that look like this before, soft powder set in a circle that she applies gently to her cheeks.
It'll surely work for his purposes, if he's careful.
He doesn't even need to go check the picture on the fridge to get a clear vision of how it looks—Chris has stared into Buck's face enough times to have it memorised. Asymmetrical marks that appear pink in certain lights, and red in others. A splash above the eyebrow and a smaller one tucked in the crease of his eyelid. When Buck smiles, it never quite disappears, but it does seem to shrink, and Chris tends to track the way it almost dissolves away, the first to hide in a game of sardines, laugh lines the rest of the players.
It's as welcoming and familiar to Chris as the peeling-up linoleum by the front door. He reckons he could draw it in his dreams, with his eyes closed, with his arms crossed and fingers itching for an escape.
It's maybe why he sees his dad with his hand on the knob of the door so much. Like he's preparing to step out into the unwavering sunlight, that knows just how to dredge up every thought he's ever had and turn it into a scripture that he has to follow.
He's never been to church with his dad, but the look on his face whenever he opens the door to Buck reminds Chris of the way his grandparents looked in church, prayer books in hand and mouths moving in tandem with the priest.
Chris might just be seeing things that aren't there, but he can't help but take catalogue of the way Dad lets Buck flit about the house with practiced ease, like he belongs nowhere else. Not even his mom had really had that privilege. His footsteps are worn into the carpet much the same way Chris' are, bigger in comparison but just as familiar. He's got his own designated spot on the couch, his own profile on one of their streaming services that Chris had set up whilst Dad wasn't looking, chose a silly picture for. Dad hadn't deleted it either; instead, he'd sat on the couch next to Chris on a Saturday morning and smiled softly when he saw it. He'd looked at Chris like he knew it was him who'd done it, but didn't say a word beyond that. And, later, when he thought Chris was in his room working on his homework, he'd noticed Dad going through and adding things Buck might like to his watch list.
The look on Buck's face when he next came over and realised was enough to make Chris smile, wide. Buck's birthmark had flushed a darker shade of pink, and Chris had to bite down the urge to reach for it.
He also bites down on the urge to reach out and touch where he's dabbed a replica of it on himself, finger coated in pink blush that he wipes away on the hem of his shirt. He doesn't want to smudge it any further. It's not totally noticeable, not unless you look real closely, and maybe Chris is dreaming up the way he thinks it looks genuine enough, but, if he didn't know, he might think he was born with it too. Might think it was a case of genetics being passed down a family tree, and he was part Buck.
But it also feels like Buck has been such a formative part of his childhood, too, so maybe he's part Buck anyway. Maybe he's three parts of a whole, instead of the usual two.
It's not to say that he doesn't love his mom, because he always will, but Buck has been here when she hasn't, when she's been unable to, and he misses her every day, misses her like a gaping hole carved into his chest, but he doesn't think she'd begrudge Buck for stepping into a role she's no longer there to fill. She'd appreciate there being more than one adult in his life who will never stop short of giving him the best.
She'd also probably be glad he doesn't have to eternally suffer through Dad's cooking. Dad is definitely lying when he says he's getting better, but that's neither here nor there.
🖍
Dad blanches when he sees it—not in a bad way, more in a way that asks What exactly am I looking at here?
But pretty quickly his face settles back into something more normal, something more akin to the doting way he always looks at Chris. Chris knows his dad loves him, knows it so well that he thinks, sometimes, his dad loves him more than any other dad has ever loved their own child—that's how big Chris views his love. He knows he loves him, but it's always more and more obvious every time he looks at Chris, like every second that ticks by the love grows, and it shows with extreme clarity on his face.
This, though—this rivals most other times, if not all. Dad's mouth drops open in a slight part, like he still can't believe what he's seeing.
It seems pretty simple to Chris: he'd already told Dad he wants to look like Buck; this was just the obvious next step. Maybe it's different seeing it in real life versus just a one-off instance of words, or maybe Dad had just not entirely believed him when he'd said them, or assumed he'd forget by the next day.
Chris wouldn't forget.
Maybe it's something to do with the tsunami. Chris tries not to think about it, but, when he does, one thing is always prevalent: Buck.
Buck, saving him. Buck, on top of the fire truck, pulling him and others to safety. Buck, who never once gave up trying to protect him, even when it all seemed futile. Buck, who never once gave up trying to find him, even when all seemed lost.
Buck, and his birthmark. The flashing of red, blue, red, blue. Blood, water, blood. Sirens and emergency lights.
His dad's arms at the end of the day.
It all comes down to one thing, really: love, turning one way and then the other, in an endless game of tug of war that always results in a draw. Sometimes it's Chris one end and his dad the other; sometimes Buck is on the other side instead. Sometimes Chris isn't even in the equation at all, and it's a constant cycle of push and pull in which neither Buck or his dad ever let up.
Always trying to one-up each other with who loves the other best.
To Chris, the answer is simple. They love the same—same amount, same way, same hankering to always be in close proximity. The rest of it just displays differently. And Buck's birthmark seems to always be the pulsing heartbeat of it all.
So maybe it means something that an effigy of Buck's heart painted on Chris' face is what makes his dad's jaw drop, for the first time that Chris has ever seen. Maybe it means something that Dad takes Chris' face in his hands so gently, feather-light and soft to the touch. Chris' smile causes his cheeks to fill out, and Dad's fingers almost expand to make space. He brushes his index finger over the makeshift birthmark, not quite touching it—out of reverence or fear of ruining it, Chris doesn't know—but the look on Dad's face tells Chris he wishes he was. That he could.
That he could touch the real thing, too. Ask with a simple question the way Chris keeps wanting to as well.
"Chris," Dad says softly. It's a word that feels like it fills the universe, takes every small part of Chris' life and blows it up wide, a little screen photograph shown on a main stage.
"Dad," Chris says back.
Dad chokes out a laugh. "This is—" he tries, but there's a click in the hollow of his throat that Chris has learnt to mean his dad is lost for words, heel turns over and over as he looks for what to say.
It could be easy: I love you, Chris. I'm beginning to think I might love Buck too.
He'd take the words and say them for his dad if he could. He remembers Freaky Friday being on in the background when he was with his mom once, although his grandparents never would've approved, and he doesn't know the exact details, but—if Dad is too afraid to say something lying within him, Chris can be brave and do the job for him.
"I look like Buck," Chris says.
His dad nods, eyes closing like he's falling into solemn prayer. When he opens them again, Chris thinks he can see a tear gathering in the corner of his eye. "Yeah," Dad murmurs, smiling just at the edge of his mouth. "You look like Buck."